Potty Adventures, Day Two

I have two potties, but thus far have only used one. On Monday, Jazz spent most of her day sleeping; on Tuesday, Rory wasn’t here. Two kids can share one potty.

This is not laziness on my part. I can carry two pots up the stairs as easily as one. No, the thing is, I have a puppy. A seven-month-old puppy, who is VERY INTERESTED in this whole potty-training endeavor.

Very interested in bare butts. (Oh, ugh.)
Very interested in pee on the floor. (Whee!)
And very, very interested in potties. Even nicely rinsed potties still smell heavenly-divine to a seven-month-old puppy. A seven-month-old irrepressible puppy. (Actually I think that phrase is a redundancy. All seven-month-old puppies are irrepressible.)

Daisy! Away from the potty! Away!

Daisy! No!

Daisy! Leave that thing alone!

Daisy! Get your nose out of there!

“Daisy!” [Calling over my shoulder to my own two kids, chatting in the kitchen, as I fend Daisy off with one hand while trying to help Grace sit properly] “Will someone please crate this animal?”

ONE of my potties, see, has a lid. The other does not. So one potty is Daisy resistant, while the other is a veritable smorgasbord of all manner of YUMMY, YUMMY scents and savories.

Ick.

We are using the potty with the lid. Ahem.

And yesterday, on day two, Jazz was rested and ready to potty. She was interested in the potty, but she was INTO the Smarties. Fervently. Rory and Grace hadn’t thought of it, but Jazz instantly realized that if she gets a Smartie every time she plops her butt on the potty… well, she’ll just do that, won’t she? All. Day. Long!!!

I’ve been using a timer so I don’t lose track of how long those little pee-bombs have been darting around my home. Originally it was set to 20 minutes, but the girls were doing so very well, I moved it to 25 minutes mid-morning. After a three-minute stretch in which Jazz “earned” herself four Smarties, I decided she could ONLY go when the timer beeped.

Because, yeah, I bought the big bag, but she’d have consumed the thing single-handedly before lunch at that rate… Moreover, she’d managed to squeeze out a driplet of pee each time, so I figure the girl has plenty of control. If she can force it out, she can hold it in.

That’s the theory, anyway.

“When the timer beeps, you can try. You wait for the timer now.” Well, poo. You know how historical novels often have their young heroines “flounce” when unhappy about something? I had a mental picture of what that must be, but I’d never seen anyone really flounce before.

Jazz flounces.

Upon being told she would have to WAIT for the next Smartie Opportunity, Jazz flounced off to the craft set out on the dining table. And when that timer beeped?

As it happend, Grace was closer to the potty, so Grace was setting herself down when Jazz came roaring up, SMARTIES on the brain. Grace is a slow-mover. She eats slowly, she dawdles when she walks, she talks slowly. Grace does nothing quickly. So in the time it takes Jazz to slip down from the chair in the dining room and bomb across to the potty in the living room, Grace has almost, but not quite, settled her butt on the potty.

Jazz flies into the room, and performs a very creditable body check, causing Grace to sit, not on the potty, but on the floor beside the potty.

Nice try, little Ms. Enthusiasm. But you can wait.

We resettle Grace on the potty. Grace pees. Jazz claps and cheers. Jazz sits. And produces a sizeable poo. Grace looks stunned. I think it honestly hadn’t occurred to her THAT was a possibility.

Lessons learned all round then. And we do the potty dance again, cheering and clapping for the steaming pile.

And then, before Daisy succeeds in her efforts to get up close and very personal with the S.P., I whisk the potty upstairs for a thorough cleaning.

At the end of today:

There were no accidents at all.
Grace is still on track for training.
Jazz is probably going to get there even sooner.
Daisy has not ONCE managed to get her nose in a pile of… anything.

I’d call that a success.